About Me

Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. Author of FREEDOM OF RELIGION AND THE SECULAR STATE (2012), HUMANITY ENHANCED (2014), and THE MYSTERY OF MORAL AUTHORITY (2016).

Saturday, July 03, 2010

Blog break starting early

I woke up yesterday with a bit of a winter chill or whatever. I've been so healthy since moving north that I can usually shake something like that off in one day, but I still don't feel great today so will take it very easy. I need to be in good shape for the AAP conference, which will be pretty intense if I do the right thing and go to as many papers as possible.

Tomorrow, Sunday, I drive down to Sydney for it. I'll be home on Friday evening. Basically, expect silence for the next week or so.

Evidence has surfaced which makes it likely that the YNH author was also the pseudonymous apocryphal Tom Johnson at The Interesection. Reading this stuff for the first time, I had a chuckle at your comment there. Well done!

Hi Russell, hope you had a good time in sin-city. I noticed something you said in a comment on B&W. Who is Luke Vogel? Is he the William guy of YNH fame? I wonder if he's this Luke, who posted on your blog and according to him, you're my mentor.

Especially:Both of you could consult your philosophical mentor, Russell Blackford, and have him fall back on Deism and complain people don't give him enough credit for making a "nuanced" argument and how I have people I worship.

This was last November, and was pretty much when I took a break from the internet for a while. So I didn't follow or check up on this guy again. But the encounter stuck in my head because it just seemed weird.

Luke Vogel (supposedly his real name, but who knows?) is the guy you mean. He's the person who often posts here as "Luke" and at Jerry Coyne's blog as "Dave" (but needs to be distinguished from David Mabus and David Heddle).

I believe he's used both identities at The Intersection and has also commented in other places such as RD.net and, yes, Massimo's blog. He's gone quiet of late, but was running quite a vendetta against Jerry and myself last year.